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My mother practically glows. "Slate. What a sturdy name."

“It's a pseudonym, Mom, not building material,” I interject. “He’s here to harass you for your annals. I assume he’s looking for the neighborhood watch folders you’ve been hoarding since the nineties.”

"Harass?" My mother gasps, pressing a hand to her chest as she beams at him. "Don't be dramatic, Serena. It’s called research. And Slate, darling, your timing is actually divine. We’ve already got all the boxes down from the attic. I’ve been making these two poor girls help me sort through the essentials all morning."

Tamsin snorts, leaning against the counter. “By essentials, she means every newspaper clipping, town directory, photograph, and mildly incriminating scrap of paper anyone in Stillwater has produced since 1984. You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking for the town’s collective dirty laundry, Mr. Slate. Elaine keeps it all neatly sorted and filed away under G for Gossip."

"I prefer community records," my mother corrects, already ushering Baryn out of the kitchen toward the sitting room. "Come, come. The sitting room is a disaster, but the information density is quite high. Serena, bring the tea? Or perhaps Slate would prefer something stronger? You look like a man who appreciates a good bourbon, though it's a bit early for the heavy stuff."

I follow them, feeling like a reluctant tail on a very fast, very chaotic comet.

The sitting room has been transformed into a sorting facility. Cardboard boxes are stacked three high against the floral wallpaper, their lids gaping open to reveal a chaotic slurry of yellowed newspapers, Polaroid photos, and manila folders.

My mother gestures broadly to the mess. "Take your pick, Slate. What exactly can the Turner Archives do for you today?"

Baryn stands in the center of the room and hooks a thumb into his pocket, his gaze sweeping over the boxes with what can only be described as hunger.

"Marj over at the inn mentioned you might have kept records on a string of robberies," he seems hesitant, almost. "Specifically the ones that happened the same week Casey went missing."

My mother’s expression changes. The amusement disappears, her attention sharpening in a way I recognize immediately. For all her eccentricities, my mother has spent years collecting people’s information the way other people collect books or vinyl records. She knows who married whom, who stopped speaking to whom, which friendships ended badly, and which version of a story everyone agreed to tell in public.

"Ah," her voice drops. "I knew someone would eventually come asking about the things that didn't make the front page. Someone other than Serena, that is."

My mother doesn't go for a specific file. She doesn't have to. She simply gestures to a stack of three overstuffed milk crates near the window; a haphazard filing system that would give a librarian a stroke.

"It’s all in there. I didn't just keep the police reports—I kept the logs of who was staying at the inn and the cabins. The summer tubing crowd was particularly rowdy that year. A total influx of transients.” Her eyes sparkle with the thrill of the hunt. "Everyone was so sure it was a drifter. It was the easy answer, wasn't it? Blame the people passing through with their inner tubes and their beer coolers."

My hand is hovering over the lid of a box labeled MISC - AUGUST '09. The familiar, bitter taste of I told you so rises in my throat, as potent as it was all those years ago.

"It wasn't the tourists." The words are out before I have the good sense to keep them to myself, but this entire topic hits a nerve I thought I’d successfully cauterized years ago.

I’m accustomed to working with empirical evidence. I don’t form a hypothesis until I have enough of it to support one.

Unfortunately, this case seems determined to provide me with the opposite.

There are too many missing osteological and forensic markers, too many gaps where hard facts should be. Under normal circumstances, I would wait for more evidence before drawing a conclusion.

At the moment, jumping to one may be the only way to figure out which gaps need filling.

Baryn looks up, his attention settling fully on me. His eyes narrow slightly as he turns my statement over, picking it apart piece by piece.

I have the uncomfortable sense that I’ve become the specimen.

More uncomfortable is the sudden heat low in my stomach, an entirely involuntary response to being examined this closely by a man I’d prefer to find considerably less attractive.

My body has seemingly confused scrutiny with foreplay.

"You don't think so?"

"I know it wasn't." I yank a folder out of its slot. "The timing was too exact. The thefts didn't happen at the motels or the campsites. They happened in the residential cul-de-sacs—the places you’d only know were empty if you lived next door. I had a whole theory mapped out. While the town was distracted by the sheer volume of outsiders, someone local was using the noise as cover."

I can still feel the ghost of that sixteen-year-old rage. I’d taken my notes to the station. I’d sat in a hard plastic chair and waited for the police chief to look at what I’d found. I really thought he would listen. His son and I were friends. I’d known him my entire life.

He patted me on the head, told me I had a vivid imagination, and suggested I go get a milkshake with the girls.

Being a teenage girl with a penchant for logic meant my observations were adorable rather than actionable.

Even Ian hadn’t backed me up, though he’d at least had the decency to look guilty about it. Being his son, it seemed, didn’t make challenging the Chief any less intimidating.